


Dreams Worth Having

by Ika (Dolores_Crane)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:12:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolores_Crane/pseuds/Ika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Federation administrator reflects on rebellion and dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams Worth Having

I get into my office and shut its heavy door behind me, and the noises outside disappear immediately into the carpeted quiet of this room.

It's been eighteen months now but there are days when I'm still surprised by it, as if I expected to walk into one of Space City's metal-echoing concrete cubes. But here, inside, the floor and walls are softened and warmed with paper and carpet and colours, and all the corners are rounded off; the desk is natural wood, the coffee Vizna brings me is made of real beans.

 _Not bad,_ I think as I settle into the chair, _for a dream-head._

I was never really a dream-head, of course. Not even in those hopeless, comfortless, metal-echoing cells in the City: I was always biding my time and waiting for my chance, and I was never stupid enough to mistake a dream for a chance.

I'm not stupid enough to mistake these comforts for success, either. These things don't matter, really. Not the carpet, not the coffee: not even the job. I'm just biding my time.

*

Medical have put in a request for fifteen healthy subjects, and the guards want another clearing order: they're complaining about the overcrowding again. I send a quick message down to the base commander explaining patiently that they can't keep requesting clearings; the strain on the disposal unit is at maximum and we expect them to find other ways to manage the increasing prisoner numbers. Then I go through the records for Medical, cross-referencing name/age/sex and last medical report. In holding compound conditions, medical reports go out of date quickly, so there's no use sending anyone to Medical unless they've been examined within the last week or so.

One of the names the computer offers me is familiar from last month's intake. A political. _Maire Ellott_. I delete her name from the list, but that means I can only come up with twelve suitable inmates, at least until this week's shipment is processed. Fuck. A fight with Medical is the last thing I need. I sigh and buzz Vizna for a coffee: then I remember she's not in today, she's still on compassionate leave after those idiots assaulted the compound last week and she was caught on her way in, stuck in the transporter for three hours, watching the battle through the increasingly dirty plexiglass windows. All right for some. I sigh again and call Medical anyway.

Within five minutes my knuckles are white on the edge of the desk and I am shouting: "Listen, you stupid little jobsworth, don't you tell me how to do my job! You have _no idea_ the pressure we have to work under here!"

"If you knew _how_ to do your job I wouldn't _have_ to tell you, Lin!" he shouts back. It's not my real name, of course; I used to have a different one, one that would never have got me within a million spatials of this natural wood desk in this carpeted office.

The grainy image on the screen is as angry as I am. "The last ten you sent us were worthless. Barely lasted five minutes. You know damn well how much we need these results! We need decent subjects and we need them today!"

"I can't give you what I don't have," I snap. "I have twelve healthy subjects in the compound. Do you want them, or not?"

"Fine," he says, barely civil, and terminates the link.

*

Maire said to me, last month: _It doesn't matter what you do to me. I can endure anything because I know that one day Blake will come for us. He saved my mother's life back on Albian, before the war: he will save us too. All we have to do is endure._

Here. She was here, and she said that to me. The high fence was reflected in her dreamy, closed-off eyes as she spoke.

 _Stupid._

But I don't put her name back on the list.

*

Outside everything is cold, hard, dirty and noisy: just like home. There are forty in today's shipment, mostly politicals from that assault on the compound last week. We rounded them up and shipped them to Cassiona City for trial and now they're back, shuffling through the wire of the compound.

Well, it's the only way they were ever going to get in, realistically.

"Welcome to Cassiona-IV holding compound," I say, and so forth. The point of the speech is really only to keep them on their feet for another ten minutes; they are already swaying. One of them drops to the floor while I speak and a guard goes over to kick him or her. The other prisoners move out of the way politely, indifferently, like workers stepping over a drunk on the tram. Good: this group will be no trouble. I go over to the fallen prisoner and offer a hand up. It's a woman, I see when I am close enough.

More than that. It's a woman I know. Even more, it's a woman who knows _me_ , from before.

Unbelievably, she recognizes me. On her feet, swaying, she stares at me and her eyes flash in her dirty face. It gives her a human look which is disconcerting in this place.

"You," says Jenna Stannis, "It's you." And then she starts to say my real name so I hit her across the face so no-one will hear. I pull the punch, of course; but she is so weak that she staggers anyway. Good. The guards are watching.

"You will die cursed," she says, pulling herself up, and there's so much conviction in her tone that I think I believe her.

Would it matter?

*

I got three shuttles' worth of goods lost: food, blankets, clothing. I had them sent to neutral planets where resisters might find them.

I didn't shoot when I saw a group of prisoners escaping, though it might have been a mercy; their remains were found in the forest three weeks later.

I've passed messages, I've pulled strings, I've pulled punches: and if it wasn't me behind this desk, in this uniform, behind the wire, it would be someone who was doing this job for real.

And I accept the risk. If those fanatics had managed to liberate the camp last week, I would have been just another dead uniform for all anyone knew: until Blake comes back - three years, he promised me three years would be all I had to wait - and I can prove what side I've been on all along, until then, the good I've done is ghostly and unprovable, the evil glaring and undeniable.

But of course they didn't liberate the camp. They never had a chance. Fanatics, fantasists: they're no different to Petie, Hanna, all the others, throwing their lives away chasing dreams; and what use are any of them to anyone now? Dead, all of them, dead and gone. I don't even see Petie in my dreams any more.

They should have known. There's been no word from Blake in a year. The Federation's weak, but the Resistance is weaker. After the war, when my friends were massacred, I couldn't even find another group to take me in: I took this job because I thought it would be the best place to find revolutionaries. And I was right.

No word from Blake in a year.

But it's all right. I can wait for my chance. And so can he.

We're biding our time.

END


End file.
